{"id":72303,"date":"2016-08-18T12:15:45","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T16:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=72303"},"modified":"2016-08-17T23:10:34","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T03:10:34","slug":"column-musings-of-a-simple-cave-dwelling-country-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=72303","title":{"rendered":"COLUMN: Musings of a Simple (cave-dwelling) Country Man"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hobie<\/a>
Hobie Morris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Humor: An endangered species<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

By Hobie Morris<\/em><\/p>\n

(Brookfield) Politicians and diapers both need to be changed often and for the same reason.<\/em><\/p>\n

Taxation with representation isn\u2019t so hot, either.<\/em><\/p>\n

The shortest distance between two people is laughter. – Victor Borge<\/em><\/p>\n

The 2016 presidential candidates have at least one thing in common\u2014the apparent lack of any discernable humor. Wouldn\u2019t it be refreshing if they occasionally poked fun at themselves? (Others are laughing at them so why shouldn\u2019t the candidates join the crowd?)Would it help them with the voters? The great American lawyer Clarence Darrow once quipped \u201cif you lose the power to laugh you lose the power to think.\u201d The level of civic knowledge about our democratic governmental structure is by all surveys abysmal. Thinking and knowledge, along with humor, are seriously endangered. George Orwell wrote in his book 1984 \u201cDon\u2019t you see that the whole aim of newspeak is to narrow the range of thought\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

My beautiful wife, who is an astute political observer, has mirthfully suggested that the staggering amount of presidential hot air is contributing significantly to global warming. Politicians at all levels need to follow the great political observers and satirists of the past. Such delightful writers as Mark Twain and Will Rogers, to name two of my special favorites, suggest that politicians need to return to the 11th commandment, which says \u201cdon\u2019t take thyself too d—–d seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

This simple country man searches in vain for the honesty and simplicity of the \u201csilent Cal Coolidges\u201d of the past. (One time a reporter asked Coolidge what he thought of sin. Coolidge replied \u201cI\u2019m against it.\u201d) Coolidge, like the immortal Yankee baseball player Yogi Berra, said simple nuggets of humor and good sense without knowing it. They make our current assortment of politicians rather bland, stale and humorless in comparison.<\/p>\n

Lawyer Clarence Darrow once observed \u201cwhen I was a boy I was told anybody could become president. I\u2019m beginning to believe it (As Yogi said \u201c it\u2019s like deja vu all over again.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Jay Leno said in the spirit of poking fun \u201cif God wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates.\u201d This reminded me of a true story of a woman elected to a political office. The only problem\u2014she had died a month before the election. Did the voters decide in their collective wisdom they would rather have a dead woman in office than a living man?<\/p>\n

Political jokes often get elected. It reminds this cave dweller of a 1912 New York City newspaper headline \u201cLunatics to Run Railroad–Louisiana will operate Short Line with insane patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

This simple country man wonders at times who\u2019s running America\u2019s Short Line. It was Plato who observed \u201cthose who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Yogi warned \u201cyou\u2019ve got to be very careful if you don\u2019t know where you are going because you might not get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sage advice for all of us, especially for the circus array of 2016 political blowhards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Humor: An endangered species By Hobie Morris (Brookfield) Politicians and diapers both need to be changed often and for the same reason. Taxation with representation isn\u2019t so hot, either. The shortest distance between two people is laughter. – Victor Borge The 2016 presidential candidates have at least one thing in common\u2014the apparent lack of any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23677,23808,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-iOb","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Morris-head-new.jpg?fit=226%2C287&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}